A People’s History Of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian

A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian is about five girls finding sunshine while thriving in chaos and fighting for what defines them. The protagonists fight to save the small world they live in. Heaven is the small world they fight for to live in, a thirty-year-old slum hidden between brand-new, high-rise apartment buildings and technology incubators in contemporary Bangalore.

Heaven, the name seems to be an irony considering the place they live in. However marginalized a community they might be, they are bonded by love, acceptance, and diversity. They are the victims of urbanization, who fearlessly wage a war against the vanishing act, not just them but people like them are made to go through.

Belonging to each other, the protagonists are bonded by accepting the differences they have and the problems they are conferred with. May it be gender, caste or sexuality; it is the women in A People’s History of Heaven who fight for their existence, to revive the happiness which could be lost amidst rapid urbanization .It takes a clear-eyed look at adversity and geography and dazzles in its depiction of love and female friendship.